Sarah Key's Back Sufferers' Bible Reprint Edition

With that in mind, it seems but a small step for a down-home Auzzie girl like me to have a go at unveiling the mystery of bad backs. And this is what my new book ‘The Back Sufferers’ Bible’ is all about. With nearly thirty years of tinkering around in human spines, I thought it not unreasonable to put forward a new model for the way I see them breaking down.

First of all, I propose the vast bulk of common-or-garden backache is caused by nothing more than a stiff spinal segment. Segments stiffen more readily at the base of the spine because our vertical stature means the bricks at the bottom of the stack take more weight, but they also stiffen because we sit too much. Both factors squelch together the lower spinal segments thereby squeezing fluid from the intervertebral discs (the small pillows between the vertebrae). This makes the bottom of the spinal column more brittle.

I believe this alone is the provenance of most low back troubles. If a segment gets stiff enough, particularly L5 (the lowest spinal vertebra), it is common to get gnawing old backache which steadily becomes more prevalent. But more to the point, spines suffering ever-increasing degrees of brittleness are that much easier to hurt. What starts off as a grumbling backache can steadily worsen as you keep jarring it and ricking it with everything you do. For this reason, it doesn’t matter who you are, prince or pauper, olympic athlete or couch potato, usually sooner or later spinal problems will visit you.

What starts off as a benign pre-clinical condition, where you are achey after a long car trip or sleeping in a soft bed, can then keep going (if you are unlucky enough) through five distinct stages of breakdown. These categories are my own proposition and I suggest they correspond to five generic groups of spinal disorder. You, the sufferer, have a unique opportunity of understanding what category you are in, and what might be going on inside your back. You’ll see it’s easier than you think, although I’m not suggesting that you circumvent your usual back-carer. You will be greatly empowered by having some handle on your own problem, particularly in understanding how it came about in the first place, and you may recognise the familiar symptoms which flag the different milestones as your problem spreads wider.

And finally, there’s what you can do about it. There are simple regimes for you to follow which reverse the compression of the spinal base, and then exercises which beef up the strength of your trunk muscles to maintain the vertebral separation already achieved. If you still need manual or manipulative therapy, administered by your physiotherapist, osteopath or chiropractor (which most people do,especially in the early stages), their job is made so much quicker and easier by what you do yourself. It’s simple. You’ll see.